What The Dark Night Of The Soul Teaches Us About Healing With Isabella Lloyd-Damjanovic

n this soul-deep episode, i’m joined by intuitive tarot reader and founder of balkanska magic, isabella lloyd-damjanovic, for a conversation that goes beneath the surface — into the shadows, grief, and deep transformation that comes with the dark night of the soul.

we explore:

✨ how loss, disorientation, and burnout crack us open

✨ the truth about shadow work and inner criticism

✨ why healing can’t be rushed (and why it shouldn’t be)

✨ redefining self-worth beyond productivity and perfectionism

✨ rituals of self-compassion during your hardest seasons

if you’re in it right now — the fog, the burnout, the questioning — this one is your reminder that darkness isn’t the end. it’s often the beginning.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to All Our Parts. I first want to say thank you. I have gotten some really awesome feedback from people on this podcast. It has been a project that I have been trying to figure out what it is, what it's going to look like, and it has truly evolved right in front of me. And so thank you all for being on this journey with me. So this episode, I I had to move up because people are literally going through it. I don't think I know a single person right now that is not struggling with something. And so my conversation with Isabella, I was like, this is prime timing right now. She discusses the dark night of the soul. And when I tell you it is insightful, it is intuitive, I could have listened to her talk about this all day. And so now I'm gonna let you all sit with it and know that you're not alone in what you are feeling and what you are feeling is very valid. So I hope you enjoy this episode. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to All Our Parts. I am so excited to introduce you all. My guest for today, she is a tarot reader. She is recently starting a new graduate program. I have been able to connect with her over Instagram, and I'm so excited that we finally get to have this conversation. Isabella, it's so good to speak with you right now.

SPEAKER_00: 1:40

So excited to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01: 1:43

Of course. So just to kind of start us off, tell us about yourself.

SPEAKER_00: 1:49

Yeah, so my name is Isabella Lloyd-Damjanovic. I have a very long hyphenated last name. If you know, you know. Struggle is real. I am an intuitive tarot reader. I am also a one-woman business. I own Balkanska Magic Company, which is my spiritual wellness business that focuses on providing intuitive spiritual guidance, using tools like the tarot, as well as producing handmade metaphysical tools So that's kind of what I've been doing full time for the last couple of years. But as Jasmine mentioned, I am going back to school this fall. I am starting a master's program in social work. And I hope to, you know, eventually when that program is done, be able to kind of take that license to practice and elevate my business to the next level to offer holistic health care that addresses, you know, the mind-body connection using a range of different healing modalities.

SPEAKER_01: 2:49

Yes. Yes! Yay! What led you to start your business that you have now?

SPEAKER_00: 2:56

So my business was a pandemic baby, like many other businesses. I was actually currently in graduate school. I already have one master's, which has not really proven its usefulness yet, but maybe it will eventually turn out to be helpful. It was January of 2021, and I was just kind of going through it as many were and I was looking for a creative outlet and so the way I started my business was originally I made and I still do make intentional gemstone jewelry so I got really into crystals and wondering like how can I wear crystals in a way to manifest or maximize the energies that I want to experience you know because I was really struggling with for instance motivation I was struggling with having enough energy to do what I needed to do I was struggling with feeling creatively inspired so I started basically learning how to make gemstone jewelry and then some of my friends were like you should you should like sell this like I think people would like this so that is how my business began and it wasn't until I went through a spiritual awakening I guess is what I would call it following the loss of my grandmother that I got really into the tarot and I practiced tarot just for myself for a while and then at a certain point I kind of felt called to expand my business and my offerings to incorporate tarot because I think that it's just such a beautiful symbolic language that can provide this like emotional catharsis that I think many people are seeking and are not able to find you know or even afford like with traditional means like talk therapy so my business kind of slowly morphed to be broader than it originally was and nowadays the bulk of my business actually is focused on my tarot practice. And I love that. Like, I think that honestly, it's kind of something that I just stumbled into. I didn't like strategically plan that this would happen, but I feel like kind of the best things in life are usually like that. So, so yeah, that's kind of my little, my short little intro.

SPEAKER_01: 5:08

Yes. Well, I feel like so many people's pandemic babies were more of something that we stumble upon and we are coming back to it in such a different way like I found social media during the pandemic and the job that I was working at the time I offered to manage their social media accounts because what else was I going to do locked in my house and the knowledge that it gave me I had no expectation to be having a podcast right now or running my own social media account right now I always imagined like a blog or something but I found myself going back to the things that really gave me like some motivation during the pandemic.

SPEAKER_00: 6:03

Yeah, I think a lot of us kind of, it's so funny looking back on the pandemic. Obviously, it was really stressful and scary and disorienting as it was happening. But nowadays, people almost have this like nostalgia for the pandemic time. You know, like the peak time of like lockdown when everything was kind of not normal because in a way it was kind of like this free creative time where suddenly we had the time on our hands and you know like the I think the mental permission to explore things that maybe have always called to us or interested us but just fell by the wayside during regular life so you know in that way I think I think you know for me at least yes it was a very difficult time and I know for for everyone it was a very difficult time. A lot of horrible things happened and it's not also over yet. But it was kind of a blessing in a way for me because I think it really forced me to like wake up and to snap out of autopilot. I think that I was very much on autopilot and this was like an opportunity for me to kind of in a risk-free zone just experiment a little bit more and tap more into my creativity and connect with other people who were doing the same. And it is so interesting to see like how many people that I even know personally drastically altered kind of the course of their trajectory as a direct result of what they did or what they stumbled into in the height of the pandemic and the lockdown.

SPEAKER_01: 7:34

Yeah. I know our conversation today is about healing, and I feel like during that time, healing like it was like a expedited process at times like it was very sometimes rocky at the surface and then just below you could feel the current starting to shift and It wasn't until I would say after the peak when people were getting back to their quote unquote regular lives that everyone was like, wow, I really changed. Like I really, I'm

SPEAKER_02: 8:07

not

SPEAKER_01: 8:08

the same person that I was pre-lockdown. And then I think so many of us are tugging with who was I before lockdown and who am I after lockdown and can I rectify the two or justify the two? 100%. so speaking of healing tell me about healing through the dark night of the shadows you post so much of your content around it and i i'm just so enamored with the concept especially when thinking about the shadow self essentially the one that we hide from the one that we scour the one that we try and bury versus integrating it it's always been a So fascinating for me to want to understand how I can incorporate the shadow into my own healing practice.

SPEAKER_00: 9:05

Yeah. So, you know, the dark night of the soul is like a colloquial expression that I think a lot of people are superficially familiar with. But when we take a moment to really like dive deeply into, first of all, the origin of the expression and what it really means, it characterizes what is basically a universal human experience, which is moments of profound love. loss, grief, change, transition, disorientation, that kind of cause us to lose our faith or to question the nature of reality, right? To question like, in an existential way, why is this happening? Like, what does this mean? Surely there must be a meaning to this because I cannot accept that this is just, that it is what it is, right? That it is what it appears to be. And the dark night of the soul is is the name for this period of time in which we go through this period of reckoning with the ugliness of reality. And it's not to say that before the dark night of the soul, we think that everything is perfect and are living in some naive version of reality. But I think that when a dark night of the soul happens, and it's often triggered by, let's say, the loss of a loved one, or maybe a huge change in your life, like the loss of a job, or maybe being canceled, or maybe falling into depression, struggling with a mental health issue, something which leaves you feeling alienated, feeling like nobody gets what I'm going through and I'm alone in some way. I'm struggling to make it through this and I don't feel resourced. The Dark Night of the Soul is kind of like an awakening to a deeper level of experience where you understand that there are no highs without the deep, deep lows. And I think when you talk about shadows, I think the Dark Night of the Soul is the moment where we really do meet our truest shadows and where we encounter our shadow self. Because there is really nowhere to hide. It's almost like everything is exposed. Everything that we've been ignoring or neglecting, and especially when it comes to our inner monologue and the relationship we have with ourself, I think that in these really challenging moments, oftentimes it becomes crystal clear to you how it is that you really feel about yourself and how it is that you really talk to yourself in the moments when it matters the most, when no one else is there to tell you, you're doing great, it's going to be okay. Are you there to look at yourself and say, hey, it's not your fault. I got you. You're going to get through this. You know, maybe some people are always on that wavelength, but I think for the vast majority of us, and I speak for myself, that is not the response that we have. We take these moments of profound loss or destabilization and we look at ourselves and we say, well, How did this happen to me? How did I make this happen? What did I do to deserve this? There's like this feeling of self-worth that gets really triggered and activated. And it pulls up a lot of these shadows of insecurity, of self-doubt, feelings of being unworthy, feelings that nothing ever comes easily to us, or maybe that good things do come to us only to then be lost. And so a lot of it reflects back, I think, these underlying narratives that maybe hadn't been at the conscious forefront of our minds when everything is going swimmingly. You know, that ask us to really be honest, like, am I supporting myself even when I'm not getting any support externally? Like, am I there for myself when nobody else is there, when nothing else is there? And at least for me, like, I realized, like, damn, I really am my biggest hater. Like, here I am, everything in my life has fallen apart, and I can't even be there for myself to say, hey, you're going to be okay. You're going to be okay. you didn't cause this to happen. You don't deserve this. You know, like it'll be fine and you'll recover from this and you'll bounce back. Like I was there judging myself and castigating myself, you know, and feeling like no one could possibly understand what I was going through because it was so uniquely specific to me and my experience. And like, yes, maybe the circumstances were unique, but I think that that feeling of isolation and that feeling of failure is very universal. And so I like to talk about the dark night of the soul because i think a lot of the discourse in new age spirituality is very much centered on the light right it's about like ascension meeting our highest selves you know yeah love and light and there's and there's no shade to that but the reality is that light cannot exist without darkness light has no meaning if there is no darkness and this is why i love the like the metaphor of the yin yang which tells us that it's not that light and darkness are two separate things but rather that they are intermixed with each other we cannot understand without one without understanding the other so I find that a lot of my clients come to me during a dark night of the soul or maybe they're making their way out of it or maybe they're even heading into it and they kind of can feel that on some level and so and so they're not looking for someone to say like oh yeah this is you know it's actually a blessing in disguise like everything will work out fine they're not looking for someone to sugarcoat the because they know that that it's not that simple if it were that simple then they wouldn't have these strong feelings like they're looking for someone to validate the darkness and the ugliness that they're encountering and to say like this is a transformative experience and it's going to be painful it's going to be messy and it's going to be difficult but but you will still get through as long as you want to get through it you will like that is the one determinant of it if you think you can do it even if you don't think you can do it but if you just desire right I don't want to be stuck in this place I don't want to be stuck feeling like this then you're already kind of oriented towards the light but there is kind of like a tunnel of darkness that we have to travel through and you know my hope is just especially for people who have trauma who have issues with nervous system regulation who struggle with mental health issues it's not as simple as just thinking in your favor or affirming positively you know like some spiritual I think coaches would would say like it's just not that simple and I want to let those people know that like that doesn't mean that you can't have this it doesn't mean that you can't be happy and successful and thriving but it does mean that you know maybe you need to take a little more time to to encounter those shadows and to interrogate like where do these limiting beliefs come from and and how do I reprogram my nervous system to feel safe and to trust me when I affirm that everything will be okay because if if we're not doing that deep work we're essentially slapping a band-aid like on top of a bullet hole like it's it's not doing anything right I know it's a lot but I have a lot of thoughts about it

SPEAKER_01: 16:06

no thank you so much for offering just like a very detailed I mean I want to go I'm going to go back watch this and journal about it because what you speak to is the duality of healing and that especially new age spirituality we want to be at our highest vibration at our newest timeline our next timeline and it's like we can't get there until we like sit with ourselves in the like in the trenches like in the muck and say oh I am feeling extremely untethered to everything around me and I I essentially am my only voice right now how I talk to myself in this time period is so critical and for one I think there is so much shame when we as people find ourselves in that position because we are of a society that is expected to be productive all the time and everything's supposed to continue moving forward continue moving forward and it's like sometimes we just have to stop and look at where we are

SPEAKER_00: 17:13

yeah 100% and I think that we can we can thank capitalism for that feeling of unworthiness when we're not at our peak level of executive function you know And that's something that many people struggle with already. Like even not going through the dark night of the soul, even when things are relatively okay on the surface, like it's hard, it's impossible to show up 100% every day. And yet that expectation doesn't change. There's no flexibility around that. So the idea of surrendering, which is what I talk about a lot, surrendering to the overwhelm and giving yourself permission to not be operating at peak capacity, giving yourself permission to like bow out and actually take some time where you're not focused on what you can do but you're but you're focused on reflecting and understanding what has already happened and dealing with what has already happened right before you can keep moving forward

SPEAKER_01: 18:12

yeah i mean there's also it sounds like this process too of redefining worthiness and so when we are isolated when we are feeling our absolute worst when we can't show up 100 percent to our relationships or to our work or whatever the case may be, recognizing that we are still whole, we are still valuable, we are still worthy, regardless of our productivity. Even if we get up, brush our teeth and get right back in bed, we are still worthy. We have still done everything that we can. 100%.

SPEAKER_00: 18:47

And I think that something that really helps make this clear to people is when you look at yourself and when you speak to yourself, yourself, you should be visualizing yourself as a child. And you should be speaking to yourself in a way that you, little you, could hear and that would be positively constructive and helpful for little you. You need to be speaking in very simple terms that are not about your productivity, but rather about your intrinsic value and recognizing that that never changes. Yes, other people's recognition of your value may may change, but that does not diminish it. But you have to hold tight to that concept because if you don't, then you basically become victim to fluctuating circumstance and everybody rides the wheel of fortune. If you are familiar with the tarot, the wheel of fortune is one of those cards where we love to see it when it pops out and usually it is a good omen, right? That things are changing, maybe there's a lucky break coming. But the thing about the wheel of fortune when you look at the imagery that there are four people riding that wheel and one person's at the top, right? Living life, high, loving it. That's where we are all trying to go. One person is on the way down and they're fearful. They're dreading what's coming next. One person is riding the way up. They're excited and optimistic. And one person is being crushed at the bottom by the wheel. And all of us go through all four positions on that wheel. Nobody is exempt, right? But sometimes it's really hard to acknowledge that and especially to be public about that you know when many people are not you know I'll say many people I don't think show up very authentically especially when they're struggling and there's a reason for that it's not like we're necessarily applauded for doing that many times we're judged or punished for doing that but it does make it harder to show up for yourself that way when you look around and it seems as though everyone is always at the top of the wheel or they're on their way to the top you know and we're not really seeing necessarily examples especially examples we can relate to of people who are on their way down or are currently being crushed at the bottom.

SPEAKER_01: 21:03

Yeah, absolutely. How I mean, how vulnerable for one to even present ourselves as the person that's being crushed by the wheel.

SPEAKER_00: 21:12

Yeah, I mean, it's not it's not glamorous. It's really painful. It's messy. And then, of course, there's always those people who see you and they're like, well, you did that to yourself. Like, you should have gotten out the way. Why are you laying there? Get up. You know, there's a lot of projection of individual blame and responsibility. And that is something that we're never going to be be able to change other people's perceptions of how we got into this situation or what it says about ourselves. But we do have control over our own perception of that. And once we focus on that, it becomes a lot easier to kind of quiet the noise of the people who just clearly aren't understanding or clearly aren't projecting any energy that's going to be helpful for us to deal with and to kind of focus on those who are uplifting us and those who understand what we're going through and see it from a place of awareness and not judgment.

SPEAKER_01: 22:09

Yeah. You also bring up a really critical piece in inner child healing too, and that's recognizing how our internal voice has been formed. I was speaking with someone recently about how I struggle with negative self-talk 100%. It is something that I have to be extremely intentional about every single day, or I will spin myself into just a really dark place. And I was talking, I was like, I realized one day, I was like, do I talk? Did I talk to myself like this as a child? Like when I messed up in a game, did I go, oh, you're the worst. You suck. You're terrible. Like how our inner voice is created. It's not just what the, it's multitudes of things. It's so many external factors. It's society. It's social media. It's teachers. it's parents, it's everyone that we surround ourselves with that over time, they start to develop our internal voice. And then we as as we get older, we have to pick apart that internal voice and say, Okay, what is mine? And what is what someone else fed me? That's not true.

SPEAKER_00: 23:24

Yeah, 100%. And something that's interesting about that, too, which didn't really occur to me until a few years ago was like, the internal voice that we hear that is not necessarily you yes that is a voice that's with you and present but that voice is not like who you are and if you want to change that voice you can do that like it is not set in stone at any time that you want like you can reprogram that and you can also recognize when that voice starts to belittle you or undermine you or judge you you can tell that voice to shut up like no I hear you but that's not me you're not me and And I think that's a really interesting kind of concept to think about because I think many people just assume that the inner monologue and the inner voice that they have is them as opposed to a reflection of them or a certain manifestation of parts of their personality.

SPEAKER_01: 24:24

Yeah, it's because we also attach ourselves to it. I think we can also, depending on where we are, are in life find some comfort because it's something maybe that we've always known and we might not or we might not have the awareness to say wow I can do something differently with this internal voice like I don't have to live with this voice all of the time and I know I know for me it took a long long time for me to even sit and recognize that my internal voice has been influenced by multiple things. And that, in fact, is not 100% authentically me.

SPEAKER_00: 25:08

Yeah. And, you know, when you start to take the point of view of the observer of the voice, as opposed to identifying with it, it'll become easier to see where some of these influences came from and to kind of parse what's you and what's something that you absorbed because of the way that you were raised or the environments that you were around or the programming that you kind of were in. influenced by yeah I mean I think it's an exercise honestly that I would encourage most people or everyone honestly to sit down and try to think about like when something goes wrong or when something does not go according to plan what is the narrative or what are the common thoughts that pop up and investigating one by one like if you had to trace a line to the first time you remember that thought popping up like how far back does it go because a lot of them are not like recent judgments like they come back from as you mentioned like that time in childhood maybe when you were the last to get picked you know in volleyball or something and and and your inner voice said well that's because nobody likes you you know and that is it that and then that becomes a core belief that is like implanted into your subconscious and then every time something happens in adulthood that is that same little thing that's being kind of pushed again that little button that's being activated um And of course, it's not easy to just decide, well, I don't want to have that belief anymore. It does take time and work, but you can uproot those beliefs that are harmful to you. And I like affirmations for that. I love subliminals as well for that. I think that we don't really recognize the power of our subconscious mind. And our subconscious mind is like a sponge. It cannot differentiate between what's true and what's false. And it doesn't know what's good for us and what's and that is why we are so vulnerable especially in childhood you know to absorbing beliefs and you know maybe thought patterns that don't help us but unless we can consciously choose to change them or eradicate them we cannot really stop them from running on autopilot you know in our minds operating system and so so affirmations are a great way to consciously retrain the mind you know and you don't even have to believe them that's the thing with the affirmations I remember people always told me before i got into my like healing journey like yeah just affirm for yourself when you wake up you know that that that you are good and that everything will work out and blah blah blah and i would always think like well all right but i don't believe it like what is the point of saying that like it's silly it felt really silly um but the reality is like again as i said your subconscious mind can't differentiate between what's true and false so you don't have to believe it all you need to do is repeat it often enough that out a certain level it starts to sink in and then you'll find that as you go on longer and longer with the affirmations you feel less resistance and maybe one day you reach a point where you say I am beautiful and you're like yeah I am there's no challenge to that from within you so it does take time you know I don't want to act like oh it's just you decide and then it's all over like I think honestly it's a it's going to be a work in progress probably for the majority if not the rest of our lives just because we are constantly being bombarded with negative input that challenges our self-concept. And so we have to really be vigilant and create these practices and these safeguards to push back against that and to take conscious control.

SPEAKER_01: 28:46

Yeah. How do you incorporate affirmations in your day-to-day? So

SPEAKER_00: 28:52

my favorite way, because I'm lazy and I also have ADHD, is I go on Canva and I create a cute little graphic and I put like five affirmations and what I do is I'll usually create like five pages and I'll group them by theme so I have self-concept affirmations I have work and career affirmations family and friends and then I'll write five affirmations related to that topic and usually I'll select things that you know they feel like a stretch for me like I don't necessarily believe them but I want to believe them and then I print those out and then I put them in an obvious location associated with the content of or the theme of that page so for instance the self-concept affirmations I have they're right on my bathroom mirror so every morning when I get up when I brush my teeth when I do my makeup they're staring at me so it's not like I need to remember like okay sit down and affirm like my eyes can't help but read them I'm scanning them the same thing with the ones that are above my desk like I think that that's a lazy hack for affirmations because I know that a lot of people a lot of coaches will recommend like set a timer and for 10 minutes sit down and affirm And I know for me, like that felt like a really huge ask because sometimes I wake up and I'm like, no, I can't concentrate for 10 minutes. You know, so I also, you know, with that kind of visual cues help me a lot. Sometimes I will also, if there's a particular affirmation, let's say that I'm focusing on, I'll make it my screensaver on my phone or my lock screen. And then that way, even when I just check the time or when I get a text message, like it pops up there and I can't help but read it, you know, so making it like super easy. for myself. I think that that's, that's really a key because, you know, otherwise sometimes you, you don't feel like doing it, but consistency is important.

SPEAKER_01: 30:44

Absolutely. And even to your point about even how we present self-care sometimes, or a lot of these practices, they are often presented long-winded or you need 30 minutes of quiet time or a place to meditate. And it's like, we also have to consider the accessibility of some of this stuff. Not everyone has 30 minutes. Not everyone has a quiet place to sit. And so then what does it look like for them? And that might be creating Canva graphics. That might even be quick voice notes while they're walking and having those audios be able to play back time and time again. I think we don't always think about wellness for the whole person. We think about very specific ideas of what wellness should look like and what this optimized version of ourselves are, which is sometimes not even realistic.

SPEAKER_00: 31:42

Yeah, that's a great point. And I think you're totally right that a lot of the times the techniques that we're being sold are geared for our optimized self. It's like us when we have the energy, we have the motivation, we have the time, we have the resources to do it. And I know in my experience, like a lot of the time that that made me feel worse. Because I would, I would, I would read something that said, you know, from a very popular, let's say, a manifestation coach, if you can just sit down for 30 minutes every day, when you wake up, and 30 minutes before you go to sleep and repeat your affirmations, everything will change for you. And I would get like six minutes in, and then I get distracted, or get hungry, or I'm like, I don't want to do this anymore. And then I would feel like I'd failed. And then I would lack the motivation to do it. And so then then we get right back to square one with the self judgment and the shame and the fear. feeling like, well, I guess I don't deserve to have my manifestation because I can't even get it together enough to sit down for 30 minutes and do this. And that is a very privileged kind of position of assumption that that's going to be helpful and not harmful. And honestly, I feel like that can sometimes be harmful to the point where now people are turned off totally because it's like, well, I just don't have what it takes. So I guess that this isn't for me. And I think with my spiritual practice, I'm very conscious of recognizing that on any given day, we were going to show up differently. And so how can we be compassionate and flexible in responding to ourselves according to what our energy level is or what our ability or our availability is that day?

SPEAKER_01: 33:21

Yeah. I always say to my clients, you don't always have to be working towards this ideal version of yourself because that leads to perfectionism that can lead to that feeling of unworthiness because I have not met this ideal self, a lot of times we have to look at our healing and our wellness and say, okay, how can I meet the version that I am today? And then recognizing that that day will change every day and meeting ourselves accordingly. Yeah,

SPEAKER_00: 33:56

and healing is not a linear process. I think this is something that we often forget. Healing is not a linear process like sometimes we're making great progress we're sticking to our routines we're feeling like we're seeing results and then we hit a block or something happens and it almost feels like we regress or go backwards like that is totally normal we cannot be moving infinitely forward that is just it's just not how it works and anyone who says that that is how it works I'm very suspicious of because it's just not human it's not human like we're iterative creatures you know like we learn things through repetition through trial and error through making a lot of false starts and wrong turns like that is how we collect information and synthesize data to really understand and come up with strategy and healing is one of those things where you cannot force it to always be moving forward like sometimes there are things out of your control and you might try your best and yet you can't move through that obstacle or that blockage and that's fine you need to give yourself grace and understand that there's a natural ebb and flow to this.

SPEAKER_01: 35:08

absolutely we are humans we are people we will change we'll evolve and what we need we might need music one day and the other day we might not just need to be out with nature like our needs shift and change and being able to accommodate the multiple versions of ourselves that may show up is in and of itself one of the best gifts that we can give ourselves

SPEAKER_00: 35:38

yeah and recognizing our wholeness you know that there are many different parts of ourselves and sometimes one or two parts are much louder and more active and others are taking a back seat and it's important when we come back to the concept of the shadow to make sure that in an effort to be productive or good or worthy we're not dismissing or silencing a certain part or parts of ourselves because at the end of the day like we're never going to get rid of those parts like they will be with us forever so it's like isn't it much more productive to face them and to ask, how can I welcome you and how can I integrate with you as opposed to exclude you? Because you cannot get rid of any part of yourself. I just don't believe that you can do that. You can rein yourself in, you can ignore parts of yourself, you can suppress parts of yourself, but that energy will always come bubbling up in some other way. You can't just pretend that part of view doesn't exist or that it doesn't need any love or attention.

SPEAKER_02: 36:42

You're

SPEAKER_01: 36:47

so knowledgeable. I could like sit here and just listen to you. And I'm really appreciating how you are explaining all of this because I definitely agree with so much of what you're saying in terms of the wellness space where it is right now and how it can just as much as it can be helped it can also create some harm and really contribute to the shame that we may feel if we're not healing at the trajectory that we may want to yeah

SPEAKER_00: 37:21

and that's something that you know I think that people should talk about and it's not about hating on the way that people are doing things but it is about being honest I think it's really important that we be honest and that we ask ourselves like what is it that I'm trying to get out of this am I healing because I feel that I'm becoming better more popular more people will like me I'm going to get more social credit or whatever or am I healing because I really do want my life to change and I want to feel more empowered and I want to feel more liberated because if it's for the latter reason then we need to understand and accept that like it's going to be an iterative process and also at the end of the day nobody can tell you how to get from point A to point Z like that's a journey that you're going to have to figure out and there will be many guides and mentors and teachers along the way and I like to think of myself as a guide to my clients I can help show them signs and I can validate their experiences but at the end of the day you have to do the work yourself you can't bypass that process regardless of how credentialed or well meaning your guide or your mentor might be they can't step into your life and do the work for you So I think when we take the pressure off that way, it starts to become easier to trust ourselves and be like, okay, I may be flawed. I may be imperfect because I'm a human, but I can still do this and I can do it for myself.

SPEAKER_01: 38:55

Yeah. As we close out, what is one key takeaway you hope that people take from this episode?

SPEAKER_00: 39:08

I guess my key takeaway would be that like it's all right if you're lost and confused and if you're wondering if you're listening to this and you're wondering like am I in the dark night of the soul or have I gone through that like chances are probably probably and instead of being scared of that or thinking that oh there's something wrong with me or I've failed like to try to reframe it as like this is a wonderful opportunity this is a great opportunity for me to get to know myself myself more deeply, for me to decide what it is that I want, who I want to be, and to consciously make changes to support that growth. I talk a lot about alchemizing circumstance into power. I'm aware that there's many things that are out of our circumstances. There are structures that are designed to deprive us of our agency and also make us feel that we don't actually have any power, and I think that this work is transformative precisely because it reminds us that we do have power we have a lot more power than we realize but we can never use that power if we don't first of all believe that we have it like nobody can take that away unless you've already kind of surrendered it and decided like well yeah you're right I don't have it so I want I mean for anyone who's listening I want you to just be reminded that you have what it takes like period you have what it takes to get through whatever you're going through you can do it and you may not know how But as long as you decide that you want to get through it, then you will. It's just a matter of time. The universe has no choice but to comply.

SPEAKER_01: 40:47

Truth. Oh my goodness. Thank you so much for having this conversation with me. How can people find you? How can people work with you if they find themselves interested?

SPEAKER_00: 41:00

Yeah, so you can find me on Instagram at BalkanskaMagicCo. My website as well, BalkanskaMagicCo.com I'm also on Threads. I'm new to Threads. I'm loving Threads. You can connect with me there. But you'll see that there is a contact form on my website if you want to get in touch with me, if you want to schedule a call just to chat with me, or if you want to book a reading with me. But other than that, I am based in the Los Angeles area, and I do pop up throughout LA County on the weekends for various events. So if you check out my Instagram page, you'll see my event calendars link there. And I'd love to meet you in person. There's nothing like the magic of connecting in person. But even if you're not around here, you can use the methods of my Instagram or my website to get in touch with me and we can connect that way.

SPEAKER_01: 41:51

Amazing. Isabella, thank you so much for your time and we will be in touch.

SPEAKER_00: 41:57

Thank you so much. It's been my pleasure.